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AUSTIN, TEX.—There have been many skeptics and even some who’ve labelled it a “scam” along the way, but the new Ouya videogame console will start trickling out to market later this month and founder/CEO Julie Uhrman seems confident her vision will be vindicated.

Uhrman reiterated the points she’s been making all along about the Ouya a during a keynote conversation with Joshua Topolsky, one of the founders of The Verge tech-news network, at the South by Southwest Interactive conference on Monday afternoon: this is a piece of hardware that will revolutionize the gaming industry by bringing prices down and giving untested software developers an open shot at the big leagues outside the usual, tightly regimented and very expensive channels.

The $99 Ouya’s democratic hook is that anyone can design a game for it and put the app up for sale on the Ouya store, where gamers will in turn have the opportunity to give the product a whirl before they decide to buy it at whatever price point the developer has set. That doesn’t mean the Ouya won’t have big, immersive games like the Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or Far Cry series on its roster at some point — indeed, one of the first titles that will roll out with its retail launch in June is a Final Fantasy remake — but it does mean that offbeat, inventive and more modestly scaled games that would never have a hope in hell of making it to your PlayStation or Xbox consoles also get a shot at sinking or swimming.

“It’s really about enabling creators. In our case, those creators are game developers,” said Uhrman. “I want to open up the world of TV gaming again.”

Uhrman’s hope is not that the Ouya will unseat the coming PlayStation 4 and its yet-to-be-released Microsoft counterpart from their dominant positions at the top of the marketplace, but that it can quietly coexist with its more monolithic competitors — competitors who have, arguably, sunk game design into a bit of a rut in recent years with their reliance on a handful of familiar tropes and big-ticket sequels.

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“It’s getting limited,” said Uhrman. “The most exciting, creative games aren’t going to the (market) anymore. … You also, moreover, shouldn’t have to pay so much money to try out a new game.

It’s about “accessibility,” she added. “Great content shouldn’t be difficult to find … If we can do Ouya for less than $99, we will.”

The first Ouya owners, of course, will also be able to brag that they are partially responsible for bringing the cube-shaped console designed by Yves Behar to life. The project was funded by a nine-month Kickstarter campaign that set out with the modest goal of raising $950,000 and wound up raising $8.6 million through 63,416 backers.

The Android-powered machine is scheduled to ship out to those Kickstarter supporters on March 28, which — as Forbes magazine recently noted — “gives developers a chance to run a large number of users through a sort of semi-beta” test and determine what works and what doesn’t with the new system. Retailers such as Best Buy, Target and Amazon will stock the Ouya in June.

As nerve-wracking as it must be to unleash an entirely new “gaming ecosystem” upon the planet, Uhrman confidently stated that “our velocity is already greater than what we forecast” — even if Tobolsky couldn’t pry specific figures on the initial orders out of her.

THIS IS THE WEBTHROW Ben Rayner is tweeting from Austin from @starentertain. Follow him there and on Instagram @torontostar_ent to stay on top of everything SXSW Interactive and music. Austin. For stories longer than 140 characters, visit thestar.com/entertainment

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